


Non-believer

by stormofthoughts



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Gansey is dead, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 22:19:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5515373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormofthoughts/pseuds/stormofthoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world is made of two types of people: believers and non-believers. In what, it doesn’t matter.<br/>Ronan Lynch is a believer.<br/>Adam Parrish isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Non-believer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [comfortinglies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/comfortinglies/gifts).



> This is a super simple Pynch that takes place after a version of The Raven King where Gansey has died: basically, here there are Parrish and Lynch dealing with his death and being their usually angsty and angry selves. This is actually an experiment, since english is not my mother tongue. Therefore, feel free to point me any mistakes: I will correct them as soon as possible. I also hope to make justice to two (three, if we count the memory of dear, late Gansey) amazing characters and to the shining beauty of The Raven Cycle itself.  
> Special thanks to Lou, in all her awesomeness: you’re the best. (and merry Xmas, dear! This is sort of a gift for you)  
> The title is taken from “No Church in the Wild”, by Jay-Z and Kanye.

The world is made of two types of people: believers and non-believers. In what, it doesn’t matter.

Ronan Lynch believes in many things (God, his father, hatred, Gansey) and that makes him a believer - then, the fact that he isn’t a proper Catholic… Well, that matters even less.

He believes in God: how could he explain otherwise Cabeswater, the ley lines, Glendower? How else could he explain himself?

Adam Parrish is a nonbeliever. He didn't believe in Glendower: he had hoped in Glendower. He doesn’t believed in the ley lines - he feels them. He sees Cabeswater and he is Cabeswater - that is no belief.

Ronan believed in Gansey. His dreams and dreamers’ family taught him to believe in many thing, one step at the time. The most important: in family itself. Ronan believed in Gansey since Gansey was family - there is no thing truer than that.

Adam didn't believe in Gansey; he couldn’t even believe in himself - how could he have believed in someone else?

Once he asked Ronan, and Ronan stared at him with those famished eyes.

“How can you not?” Adam had no answers to that question - probably because Adam has always had too many questions and too little of anything else. Asking and not knowing is the most himself he could be, and answers are what he most wants. More than he wants Ronan.

They are sitting in the ‘ugliest tank of piss in the world’ - which would be his car in Lynch language. Ronan is caressing the gear shift with the tip of the fingers.

“Have you been drinking again?” Adam hears the shiver in his own voice: he feels that touch on his backline.

Ronan looks at him, eyes as fixed as fingers are restless. “Nope. Mom.”

“Ronan, you stink.”

“Parrish, you suck.”

In another time, life, year, Adam would have turned to Gansey. Gansay would have known what to say. In this moment, Adam doesn’t. Adam doesn’t know too much.

“I take that as a yes.”

“I don’t lie. Ever.”

“You do. Always.”

“Fuck you, Parrish.”

Adam sighs. There was a time in which that would have been true; now it isn’t.

“Gansey wouldn’t like to see you drinking.”

“And he is not seeing me doing that, is he?”

“I thought you believed in afterlife.”

Ronan grins his ‘fuck you again’ grin. “I do. I just haven’t been drinking. Just as I haven’t been lying.”

“Whatever you want, Lynch.”

Ronan is the only person in the world who can look still and restless at the same time - a caged beast confident in its own skin. Probably Adam has always found him beautiful; when the realization came to him, he locked the thought with others, tangling them so well that in the end he couldn’t recognize it anymore, having lost it in his already confused mind. But he couldn’t un-think something that obvious: Ronan is beautiful. Confessing it to himself had been easier, once it didn’t matter anymore.

“You still don’t believe in Gansey.” Even his rasp, angry voice has always been sexy, it was just that Adam wasn’t ready to admit it. He shakes his head briefly, to himself and to Lynch, same answer to different questions.

They sit in silence. Time is already relative; with Ronan, it’s like being on another planet. Minutes span and flex and aren’t ever even: this makes Adam uncomfortable. He can see them passing just because he counts Ronan’s taps on the stick, otherwise it would be like Cabeswater once more.

“Gansey loved you.”

Ronan stops his fingers and spits out of the window. “Gansey loved _us_.”

“You more than me. And I guess even a little more than Blue.”

Ronan laughs, empty. “Yeah, right.”

_What am I doing here? This is hopeless. I am hopeless._

“You know, Parrish? You should really pull your head out of your ass.”

Adam sighs again. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to get angry.”

“I am.” Adam can taste the acid flavor of a lie in his mouth, and he would bet that Ronan can see its toxic halo.

“Bullshit.”

Ronan is staring at him, the blue of his eyes even more intense than usual. He licks his lips. “This is not you.”

_You should be you again._

That’s true. For the first time since ever, Adam is not angry. Adam doesn’t feel the aching pain of injustice in his belly, doesn’t feel himself crumbling like a dry leaf and floating like dust.

Gansey is dead, and Adam is as well.

Adam has relied his whole life on the power of anger, on the push of envy: strong, awful and disgusting feelings that gave him the strength to go forward, to reach higher. He has always known that if he hadn’t been jealous of Gansey, he would have never loved him that much - he would have never tried so much to be like him. 

Adam used to believe that his ambition would have saved him from Henrietta. Then Gansey’s ambition had had him killed, and now more than ever Adam Parrish is a non-believer. 

“I’m not me. I wasn’t me since Cabeswater, I am not me since Gansey. Things that happens to us change us. You more than anyone should be aware of that.”

Ronan punches the dashboard. Adam doesn’t flinch.

“I used to make you so angry. You make me angry.”

Adam looks away. “And now you don’t.”

A fist reaches his t-shirt and pulls him: Ronan kisses him. He has chapped lips, but his tongue is hot against Adam’s teeth.

Ronan pushes him away after too little. “I should have known that you would kiss like you live.” He smiles, sharp and not happy at all. “Lame.”

Something clicks in Adam’s chest. “Go fuck yourself, Lynch.”

“See? Ever your comebacks suck.”

Adam punches the window with the side of his hand - it hurts almost instantly.

“Shut up.”

Ronan looks at his nails. “You’re boring even when you’re pissed.”

“It’s been more than a year. You should deal with it and stop being fucking childish. I cannot babysit you like Gansey did. I have my own life.”

It is almost as he said the truth, and Ronan can see that either. 

_Don’t ever kiss me to make fun of me._

Ronan stops smiling. “All you had was your pride, and you don’t have that anymore.”

Again, Lynch doesn’t lie: he had that - it was what made him angry. But Gansey, dying, had stole even that from him, taking away the only shred of himself Cabeswater and his father and his mother and anyone else had never been able to touch. 

Had it been something left of Adam Parrish in Adam Parrish’s body, he would have hated Gansey for dying.

Instead, Ronan Lynch is more Ronan Lynch that he has ever been when Gansey was alive. He is himself and he is wild Gansey, cherishing the small part of their friend that can live in him. Adam glances at him - there it is. The passion in his eyes is not Ronan’s, and the fury he usually carries around, deadly as his night horrors, is now bright as life itself. He would have despised wild Gansey; he wants Ronan now more than ever. Even more than he wants answer to that specific question in his mind.

“You’re right. I am not angry.”

_Why is he dead?_

Adam had been a fool when he had thought that Ronan could have never understood him. He does.

“It was your fault, Parrish.”

Adam’s gut twists. “I guess it was.”

Ronan screams - angry Ronan is Adam’s favorite Ronan - a brief moment of rage that ends quickly. “You killed him. Gansey is dead because of you.” He pauses and catches breath. “You didn’t believe in him. You didn’t even fucking love him.”

Adam freezes. “That’s not true.”

Ronan smiles, cruel. “I don’t lie, Parrish.”

Adam inhales, trying not to lose it. “I did love him. I did.”

Ronan shrugs. “Don’t think so.”

Adam knows what he means. He envied Gansey. He has never done anything for him, always making Gansey pay for his shit. Adam used to punish him for being luckier, wealthier, smarter, better. Adam hated him.

“I did. Ronan, I swear I did.”

“No.”

Adam repeats, a broken record on the verge of tears: “I did.”

Ronan just stares at him, passing one hand on his shaved head, brows arched, too serious. He tugs the collar of his t-shirt, the tattoo creeping on the back of his neck, a single black line that announces others, reminding Adam of his own downfall.

Then there it is. Adam starts the engine and feels the ground cracking under the wheels as he makes a U-turn. He drives until he can’t see the street anymore, clouded by tears. When he stops, the car sighs, and he explodes.

_This isn’t fair, it isn’t fair, it isn’t…_

It’s wild Gansey that pulls him out of his seat and puts him on his knees, hugging him. It is Ronan that buries his nose in his neck and kisses his jaw, calm and steady. They cling to each other for a while. Adam can’t stop crying: his t-shirt is damp, and Ronan is beautiful even with all those tears.

Adam is about to tell him that, when he says something else instead.

“Why?”

“I’m sorry.” Ronan keeps his head down, as he squeezes Adam’s arm with his fingers. “I had to, it was the only way.”

“Okay.” He breaths few times, trying to calm himself.

Ronan Lynch is a believer: he believes in family, God, Gansey, afterlife, hatred, anger, fear… He believes in his truth and in many others’. He has faith in himself and in his friends, in the power of his dreams and in the smell of gasoline, in anything that makes life worth to be living.

Adam Parrish is a non-believer: nothing of what Ronan believes in makes sense to him. He just believes in Ronan - and that takes no faith.


End file.
